Peer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɪə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Peer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 5.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 89K
- ILIsrael≈1 in 23K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 301 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Peer counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Peer | 21 |
| US United States | — | 3,736 | 1 in 89K | 3.8K | Peer | 301 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Peer | 36 |
| AT Austria | #431 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | 15 | Peer | 75 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | ≈920 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Peer | 24 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Peer | 67 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 253 | 1 in 33K | 253 | Peer | 26 |
| KW Kuwait | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Peer | 2 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Peer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Zugehörige Schreibvariante; Familienname zu Rufname Bernhard. Bearer count: 164 Tokens in Süddeutschland und Westmitteldeutschland; 1005 Telef. in Österreich.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, männl. Vom., niederländische, norwegi sche und dänische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In English, Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In enm, alternative form of pere (“peer”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, a pear, a fruit of the pear tree
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Heinrich Peerb. 1867ATAustrian actor (1867-1927)
- Beverly Peerb. 1912USAmerican musician
- Oscar Peerb. 1928CHSwiss dramatist and playwright (1928-2013)
- Leta Peerb. 1964CHSwiss artist (1964-2012)
- Dean Peerb. 1969GBEnglish footballer (born 1969)
- Dan Peerb. 1972ILresearcher
- Krisztián Peerb. 1974HUHungarian screenwriter
- Peter Peerb. 1975SISlovenian computer scientist (1975-)
- Edna Peerb. 2000ILIsraeli journalist
- Oliver Peerb. 2003CACanadian ice hockey player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 56 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.8K | #8,118 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.7K | #8,773 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.6K | #8,847 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 253 | #5,123 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Peer mean, and where does it come from?
- To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Peer?
- In the etymology graph, Petri, Pero and Petre are forms of the same name in other languages; Pelle is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Peer?
- A machine transcription gives /pɪə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Peer have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.1 thousand people named Peer in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled peer.
- How common is the name Peer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,736 people named Peer in 2010, about 1 in 89 thousand residents.
- How common is Peer compared with other names?
- In Austria, Peer is the 431st most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Peer?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/peerThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Peer” — the 431st most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.